


Purple Shoes

by annavale23



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Children of Earth Compliant, F/M, Hurt Ianto Jones, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Sad Ianto Jones, Sad Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 21:45:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16227929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annavale23/pseuds/annavale23
Summary: Once upon a time, Ianto Jones had two pairs of shoes that don’t belong to him.One, a pair of ladies’ flats, soles that have graced the streets of London and Torchwood One but never Cardiff.The other, a set of men’s boots which have probably been in a hundred different places that Ianto doesn’t know the stories to yet.Or - Ianto Jones is haunted by both his lovers' shoes





	Purple Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> References something very briefly that happens in the Big Finish Audio Drama 2.5: Broken, so not really spoiler-y, but I thought I'd put the alert here anyways.

There’s still a pair of Lisa’s shoes in his closet.

Ianto knows he should chuck them out. They’re old, worn at the soles and scuffed at the toe, and Lisa didn’t even like them very much. He didn’t even mean to bring them to Cardiff with him: in his hurry to pack up in London to bring her here, he shoved handfuls of his possessions in a single suitcase and those shoes somehow managed to slip in there.

* * *

Most days, he doesn’t even realise that they’re there. They’re at the right back of his closet, slipped behind his shoes that he stores on the bottom shelf, hiding in the dim darkness. His eyes don’t have enough time to catch Lisa’s shoes out of their corners; in the morning, he barely has time to grab his own shoes before he needs to be out of the door and in the Hub. That’s even more true that Lisa is no longer there, funnily enough, because now Ianto’s getting there early to prove to Jack that he’s not a traitor and that he’s willing to work forever to get Jack to trust him again. But sometimes, he catches sight of them regardless. Sometimes, his eyes pause at the sight of a delicate ribbon bow and for a moment, he forgets. He forgets why a bow would be in his closet and his forehead creases with a frown and he thinks _how did that get in there_ because he’s not the sort to wear bows and he leans down to get a good look, fingers reaching out and-

He always uncovers the shoes.

Slip on ballet pumps. Whatever they’re called.

They have soles with holes threatening to appear. They have material fraying, stitches coming loose. Their colour is patchy in places and the insoles are marked firmly with the imprint of feet, gently tinged with age around the edges. Most of all though, they are stained with memory, a hundred different moments he can recall feet being held in their grasp.

Lisa, sitting on the edge of his kitchen counter, ankles crossed and toes pointed towards the ground, a light laugh spilling from her lips, her shoes half hanging off one foot and he’ll ask her why she wears shoes that clearly so desperately want to come off. She’ll direct that laugh at him and shake her head. _What,_ he’ll say as he chops vegetables for their dinner, _am I missing something?_ And she’ll just keep shaking her head and tell him that they looked nice with her outfit and he can’t say he doesn’t understand that because he’s worse about shoes and outfits than she is and he’ll end up laughing along with her, all because of a pair of damn shoes.

The memories are different each time.

Ianto had no idea he remembered so much about shoes.

But it’s not just the shoes.

It is shoes and Lisa.

He’ll always end up shoving the shoes away, recoiling as if they were acid. Then he’ll throw himself into a shit-ton of work until he forgets about them again, until the next time he accidentally uncovers those worn, memory soaked flats and he’ll be falling all over again.

* * *

He can’t get rid of them.

He should.

Ianto’s going through his closet. A clear out. He’s done it to the whole apartment now, ever since he heard Gwen talking about Rhys spring cleaning their apartment and how it’s really refreshed her love of the place. Ianto had come home to the same apartment he’d had since moving to Cardiff and he’d stared at the walls bearing no decorations and something had snapped in him.

He needs fresh.

He needs new.

So he’s started, tearing through the apartment like a man possessed. It was already clean but everything can be cleaner and now his hands carry the strong lemon scent of his household cleaner. His closet has been systematically torn to pieces, old suits he hasn’t worn in months tossed to one side and shoes with torn soles to the other.

And then he’d seen them.

Little bows.

Rounded toes.

Dark purple faux-silk material.

_The shoes._

He should chuck them out.

They have no purpose.

Charity shops wouldn’t even need them. They are old and used and pointless, because the woman who used wear them is gone and she would probably shake her head at the thought of him keeping them.

But, Ianto can’t help but remind himself, she’s not here to do that because she’s _dead_ and that’s because of Torchwood, the place that’s still got his loyalties.

* * *

No one else he knows would be this sentimental.

This _pathetic._

Owen never keeps keepsakes, not even of his late fiancée.

Tosh’s place he imagines is clean and impersonal. After all, she’s got no family to display anymore.

Gwen’s keepsake is her partner, alive and well.

Suzie? Before Suzie died, she kept a normal home, a standard home. Nothing too poignant.

And Jack… Jack. Ianto doesn’t know how Jack feels about memories. Jack lives in the present. Jack thinks not of the past or the future. Jack just _lives_.

Ianto envies that sometimes.

* * *

And he has no right to hold onto the shoes.

He kissed another person.

He kissed _Jack_.

He also tried to kill Jack, but that’s beyond the point. He kissed someone else. He let someone else’s lips erase that of Lisa’s kiss, scattering it far from him.

Ianto knows that a stupid thing to think. Lisa’s kisses will always be engraved into his soul because she was his one true love, he thinks, the person he would have called his soulmate.

Perhaps the problem is that Jack’s kiss was scorching.

It was _mind melting_.

It was erasing and even know, it’s what he’s thinking about. Not Lisa’s soft lips, not her gentle touches and light smile.

He’s just thinking of _Jack._

So he should really get rid of the shoes. It’s what Lisa would have wanted, would have _expected._ It’s what he should do because well-used shoes are pointless and there’s no need to keep hold of them.

But he shoves them back in the closet all the same.

* * *

It happens by accident.

He’s going through Jack’s office, because that’s how he spends his evenings now. He impersonates Jack in emails, making sure everything continues on smoothly. He discovers dark secrets, like Flat Holm. He discovers that there is so much needing to be done, so much that Gwen and the others don’t even think of and he does it all without thanks and he knows when – not if, _when_ – Jack comes back, Jack won’t thank him either.

He’s halfway home when he realises he’s still holding the boots.

He decides to take them back the next day, because turning back now will just be irritating since he’s locked up.

The boots don’t go back the next day.

They don’t go back the next _week_.

In fact, they end up spending a total of four months with him.

They sit in the corner of his room, laces pulled half out of the eyelets, scuffs and marks from all the dangerous adventures, battered leather thick with memories. Some nights Ianto sits up in bed and he stares at those boots because the man who wears them shouldn’t be missing, shouldn’t be gone. Ianto never should have been able to take the boots because Jack should have been there to stop him, that half smile twisting on those damn lips as they ask Ianto what the hell he thinks he’s doing with Jack’s boots.

But no-one stopped him.

Because Jack’s gone.

And that’s that.

* * *

Once upon a time, Ianto Jones had two pairs of shoes that don’t belong to him.

One, a pair of ladies’ flats, soles that have graced the streets of London and Torchwood One but never Cardiff.

The other, a set of men’s boots which have probably been in a hundred different places that Ianto doesn’t know the stories to yet. Maybe he’ll never hear those stories. He’ll definitely never hear any more stories from the ladies’ flats. They’re finished with their tale, left as observers now. Their struggles are over. The boots, they have a million more stories to tell and Ianto hopes to whatever that the owner comes back to them one day.

* * *

And one day, he does.

Grinning like the bastard he is.

But he’s a little humble too.

He’s wearing a different pair of boots, a pair that’s almost the same as the pair in Ianto’s room. The creases and scratches are different though and Ianto knows that intimately. He’s spent so much time staring at Jack’s other boots that he could draw them with his eyes closed.

Jack asks him for a second chance.

Ianto can’t not say yes.

* * *

He gives Jack back the boots, as he should. They don’t belong to him and now Jack’s back, he’ll need them. There’s no need to have them in the corner of his room anymore, not now he can just walk into the Hub and see Jack’s cheeky grin safe and sound. Ianto catches himself glancing into that corner out of habit for a while, but eventually he no longer looks for Jack’s empty boots.

* * *

He still holds onto Lisa’s shoes.

He tries, a couple of times, to get rid of them. One day, he has them held over the rubbish bin, ready to let go – but his fingers refuse to loosen.

He doesn’t need them, he tries to remind himself. He’ll never forget Lisa and he’s finally got to the point where he recognises that there were two Lisa’s – his Lisa and Cyber Lisa. His Lisa is displayed in a picture on his wall, one of him and her smiling at each other. It was captured by a friend and now he keeps it displayed, ready to glance at whenever he wants to see her face again. He doesn’t need to remember Cyber Lisa but sometimes when he glances at Myfanwy, he remembers her shrieks.

So he doesn’t need a pair of shoes to remind himself of her. He’s got his reminders and they’re enough. An old pair of shoes is pointless.

Yet still, he keeps them.

* * *

 

Jack’s the one who clears out Ianto’s apartment after he dies.

Torchwood doesn’t let family keep possessions and as the head of Torchwood – or of what remains – Jack insists it’s his duty even when Gwen says she can do it. But no, he tells her. It’s _his_ duty.

He doesn’t tell her that after this is done, he’s gone. He’ll be in the stars with a drink in his hand and half a dozen in his stomach, forgetting everything that has to with planet Earth.

There’s a few pictures up – in frames, of course – on Ianto’s walls. He’s familiar with them all. This isn’t the first time he’s been in Ianto’s apartment but it will be the last.

One photo is of Ianto’s family, his mother and his sister. They’ll never get his body back.

Another is of Lisa. The sun’s shining on their faces and they’re smiling so happily. Lisa’s body. That’s another person whose family never got it back, but unlike Ianto’s, Jack didn’t keep Lisa’s. He couldn’t risk the cyber in her coming back to life.

Ianto never asked him what he did with the bodies of Lisa and the pizza delivery girl. Jack wonders if he was too scared.

The last is a photo of his face and Ianto’s. He smiles faintly at the sight, pulling it off the wall for a closer look. It’d been after a tense week, busier than usual now that Owen and Tosh were gone, and Jack had decided that the three of them – he, Ianto and Gwen – should go and get some chips together. Rose had always held the belief that chips were the best food to bond over and Jack had taken her advice and dragged Ianto and Gwen to the first chip shop with in-shop seating he could find. Gwen had been missing with one of the Torchwood cameras, usually saved for when they needed to catalogue things but he’d let her take it for a weekend trip she was planning with Rhys. The chips had gone over well and they were all even laughing a little, a first since Tosh and Owen died, and then he’d heard a click.

Gwen had taken a picture. She’d printed out a copy for the both of them. Ianto put his in a frame and displayed it on the wall. Jack had stored his in his little box of memories.

Carefully he takes the photo from the frame and folds it up into his pocket. He can’t bear to leave it to a storage locker, to grow dusty and unloved. No, it’s better for it to grow creased and worn with him, a silent promise to Ianto that he’ll never forget him.

It’s the closet next.

Jack treats every shirt with care, making sure to pack them into boxes neatly, knowing Ianto would hate unnecessary creases. He digs through the smart shoes, the one pair of climbing boots and a pair of slippers left a little worse for wear. And then, at the right back of the closet-

He finds the shoes.

Battered.

Purple.

Strange.

He frowns, wondering what on earth Ianto was doing with a pair of woman’s shoes.

* * *

 

Sometimes, when Gwen is hit by the memories, she finds herself visiting the storage lockers that belonged to Torchwood.

Now, according to the papers Jack left her, they belong to her. She’s the last of Torchwood Three; she has everything remaining except for Ianto’s body, which is safely stored up with Torchwood Two since their base was bombed to hell.

She checks Owen’s first and then Tosh’s, noticing there’s a layer of dust on all the items. If she didn’t have her responsibilities with Rhys and their family, she’d come here to clean it. But because she can’t, the dust will stay, a witness to the sadness Torchwood brings.

In Ianto’s, she finds suits that make her smile sadly, remembering the one time she asked him where he got all of those suits. She finds a picture of him and Lisa, a woman she only remembers coated in silver. The picture of Jack and Ianto she can’t find, even though she knows Ianto had it. She’s made sure to take a lovely picture of the two of them for Ianto, determined to let Ianto have at least one candid, romantic picture of Jack and him because it wasn’t like they could ever have a completely normal relationship. She only finds an empty frame.

Gwen sighs, her breath mist in the air. She takes one more glance around, her memories comforted by the evidence that her team existed once. She takes in the suits, the photos, the assorted knickknacks. There’s only one thing that strikes her as a little strange.

Sitting on top of some boxes filled with books is a pair of purple shoes.


End file.
